Today we’re going to take all of the brainstorming you did yesterday and whittle it down to your biggest dreams. The prompt is, Finalize your list of dream achievements. How well do they connect to who you want to be?

Below is the structured method that I personally used to evaluate the dreams that I wrote down, but feel free to use a different strategy if it feels right. The end goal is to come up with a manageable but comprehensive list of dreams that are meaningful to you and directly connect with who you want to be.

1. Take a first pass through your brainstormed list. Do any strike you as “not really right for you”? Maybe you wrote it down because the idea crosses your mind at times, but on closer consideration it wouldn’t make you happy? Cross ‘em off the list.
2. Look through your list again. For each item, do you have a clear sense of what concrete next steps you might take towards achieving? I don’t necessarily mean seeing the whole path laid out; you may be aspiring towards something you’ve never done before. But if you truly have no idea where to start, not even an idea of who to ask or where to learn more…that’s a problem.
3. Pull out the list of who you want to be. Number each item if you haven’t already.
4. Look at the first item on your “who I want to be” list. Compare it to each item on your dream goal list.
   • If a dream goal relates to that aspect of who you want to be, write the number 1 next to that dream goal.
   • If very few or none of your dream goals relate to that aspect of who you want to be, put a star next to that item on your “who I want to be” list
5. Repeat for each element of who you want to be.
6. By the end, you’ll have a list of dream achievements with, ideally, a bunch of numbers listed next to each.
7. Review your list of goals. Do you see any that has no numbers next to it? That’s a goal which didn’t seem to relate to any aspect of who you want to be. It probably doesn’t speak to you strongly and should be removed. (Alternately, you may have just found a gap in your list of who you want to be!)
8. Look back at the list of who you want to be. Did you star any items? Those are things that you want to be, but that you have no actionable plans towards becoming. Consider adding some concrete goals related to them.

Whew! It may be a bit of a slog, but it’s worth it; at the end you have a clear list of who you want to be and the things you want to achieve in your lifetime.

A few of my dream goals are:

• Try at least one new hobby every five years
• Work as a Project Manager, Business Analyst, or in a related function
• Donate regularly to charity

Tomorrow we’ll start Part Four, the final section, and start really getting into the nitty-gritty of setting our goals.